


it seems hard (for me to explain)

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, i just really love how much simon loves kieren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 05:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2055870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were people in this world, Simon knew, that vowed they believed in nothing and nobody. Simon also knew that those people were liars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it seems hard (for me to explain)

**Author's Note:**

> I sat down intending to write something and instead wrote something completely different. I'm still not quite happy with this, but it feels like it's finished, so I hope it sounds alright too.

There were people in this world, Simon knew, that vowed they believed in nothing and nobody. Simon also knew that those people were liars. 

Either they were lying to everyone they met or just to themselves, but Simon had tried believing in nothing, tried with every fibre of his being, and failed again and again. Twenty-seven years of life and another few of whatever state he was in now hadn’t made him religious - belief and faith were as different as night and day in his mind - but they’d taught him that, if nothing else, everyone had a handful of truths they clung to.

The first one he found, the one that didn’t exactly keep him from drowning, but nevertheless kept him afloat for a decent amount of time, was that everything meant nothing. It was all futile, meaningless and sometimes downright silly, and there was no use in pretending otherwise, as everyone around him was trying so hard to do. A person could try and try and try as much as they wanted, but in the end there was no escaping death, and then what good would all that hard work have been? 

Then, of course, he overdosed and died. And he came back. And everything he’d believed with his heart and soul, if words that fiery could even be applied to his short, sad life, was proven wrong. The dead had risen, and they were, according to the good men slicing him open and poking at his spine with sticks, very likely to end up getting a second chance at life. He wasn’t certain how he felt about that, but it had thrown him enough that for a short while, he’d started believing in Halperin & Weston. Then he snapped out of that and things got _really_ bad.

He didn’t doubt that he would have ended up the same way he had before, if that had still been possible in his deceased body with its clotted veins and eerily still heart. No use shooting a cold arm full of drugs, though. So he roamed the streets for a few days, undecided, unsure and so filled to the brim with guilt that he’d almost started fancying himself a monster. Only the invitation he’d received before his brief and last ever visit home saved him from that fate. He looked to the Undead Prophet for help and he found not only something new to believe in, but also a place where he didn’t seem to be the odd one out. He fit, for the first time in his existence. People in the commune shared his thoughts, his feelings and, most importantly, his beliefs, which was something he’d never experienced before and made him, stupidly, almost grateful that his life had been such miserable shit up until then, because he never would have found his way there otherwise, and at the time he truly felt that being a disciple of the one true Prophet was what he’d been born - or risen - to do.

He’d been thrilled when he was sent on his mission. Leaving the commune behind wasn’t a thing that gave him joy, but the idea that he could now really be useful to the cause was. Amy wasn’t bad company, either - a little weird, a little too affectionate sometimes, but she asked nothing he wasn’t willing to give her and she was special, having rising in Roarton. If thinking he was madly in love with her brought her comfort, he would do nothing to dissuade her from that, as long as she kept believing in the Prophet and didn’t attempt to idolise him that way. He did find himself growing to love her, almost against his own expectations, just never in the way she might or might not really have wanted.

But in the end, even if she hadn’t been special or a nice girl or a good friend he was very protective of, he could still never have been able to think of Amy with anything but affection. She was the one who introduced him to Kieren, after all.

Kieren Walker was something special. He was the kind of special that didn’t just stem from his place of rising, or even from the simple, mind-blowing fact that he was the First, as he so casually revealed to Simon during his impassioned speech at his parents’ dinner table, later. Simon would have loved to be able to say exactly what it was about Kieren that made him feel like maybe his heart was still capable of skipping a beat after all, but it was something, alright. It was something that made him spend far more time with Kieren than he should have, considering he was still on a mission, something that made him put on the cursed mousse and force lenses into his eyes to meet Kieren’s parents and show Kieren he wasn’t bluffing. Something that, even to his own surprise - however stupid that was, because he might have tried to convince himself he would be capable of sticking the knife he carried around like a ticking time bomb up Kieren’s throath, but that fight had been lost the first time Kieren had barged into the bungalow and smashed their lips together - had made him want to quite literally catch a bullet for Kieren. 

Kieren, that pale, soft and unhappy boy who always drowned in his sweaters and yet had more fight in him, more light and fire and everything explosive and pure and good and _right_ than Simon had ever had, even in his high tide days of being an obedient little disciple, and who didn’t even seem to realise he was anything but ordinary. Kieren, who made Simon wonder how it was possible that a town so hateful and disgusting had brought forth someone so kind, so gentle and good, that it made Simon want to weep, or follow Kieren and never let him out of his sight again and simply keep looking at him forever. Surely there could be nothing better for him to do than to try to convince that stubborn, pale, beautiful idiot that he was far better than what he took himself for, and to make him look like he’d blush if he still had the liquid red blood to heat his cheeks over and over again.

Simon had lied when he’d said there was what he believed in, and then there was Kieren. If anyone ever asked him when those two things had become one and the same, he wouldn’t have been able to give them a truthful answer if he tried. All he knew was that there were people in this world who vowed they believed in nothing and nobody. He also knew that those people had never met Kieren Walker.


End file.
